Alvin Lucier

I Am Sitting In A Room - (really wish the CD had seperate indexes for each iteration, instead of just a single track -- the original LP was ideal, you'd just play side 2 over and over --original cover art was better too). The original 1966 mono version is available on a compilation called "With A Minimum of Means", not as colorful but also interesting. This is an easy piece to perform; two boomboxes with condenser mics and you're good to go, especially if you can find a good stairwell or freeway underpass.

Music On A Long Thin Wire - one tone, pure minimalism, sounds fantastic loud.

Music for Solo Performer - brainwave scans trigger percussion instruments. lots of silence, tapping, rumbling, then loud explosions: Oliveros' brain is apparently a lot more violent than Lucier's. I'm waiting for a CD reissue of this.

Clocker - the idea of the piece is great but all the sound amounts to is the sound of a ticking clock fed through a lo-fi digital delay, didn't work for me.

Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra, Sferics, Bird and Person Dyning - the last I hear is fantastic, I'm waiting for the CD

Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas was the first record to do this. sinewaves hold a single tone, and instruments hold single tones against them, creating wild pulses and beating patterns against each other. takes patience; I don't play this one often. mp3 here.

Crossings, the sinewaves begin sweeping, from low to high over the course of twenty minutes; the instruments hold single tones, moving up half steps, following the sine wave. more a physics demo than a piece of music, but the way the beating pulses accellerate, stabilize, then pull away, is pretty crazy... you still need to be in the mood for this one... mp3.

Panorama is more of the same, slightly more refined, though the trombone sounds better for this than the clarinet. This one's worth buying entirely because of the _outstanding_ piece "Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels" -- microphones placed deep inside of sea shells that are mounted on a piano keyboard. Feldmanesque chords held forever, but the core of it is the _sound_, which is something you just have to hear, muted and obscured but still right next to your ear. It's 14 minutes long -- I've burned a CD consisting of just this piece 5 times in a row.

Navigations for Strings; Small Waves, same approach, this time for string quartet & piano; closely grouped tones, held forever; not unlike a less-massively-overdubbed Niblock. uneasy textures, not my favorite, but would love to hear this live. mp3's

Theme branches out with settings of John Ashberry poems recorded in similar filtered ways, wispy speech patterns atop the sinewaves, also a piece for Gamelan I need to check out again, but --

Still Lives is the late period masterpiece which takes everything he's learned from the above discs and makes them into music; here, two sinewaves slowly move up and down in pitch, and a piano occasionally intersects their glissandos with held tones, causing beating pulses as always. but the glissandos aren't simply mechanically ascending, they're erratically moving back and forth, unpredictably wandering, and as the piano follows them, a beautiful melodic line begins forming out of nowhere. an incredible tension between what's dictated by the sweeping sine tones and the increasing _surprise_ every time another note sounds and turns a natural corner. I can't think of another piece like this, or anyone else who could have written it.

'i am sitting...' on a long-distance train journey sounds gd. might do that when I have to make a trip.

milton (or anyone) have you seen any of this stuff live? some of this just sounds awesome.

prob get 'still lives' next but thanks again to everyone for their posts.

Charles Curtis and Anthony Burr are performing some Lucier, including a couple of the "Still and Moving Lines..." pieces, at Tonic in New York this upcoming Monday.

(Just to continue introducing myself- my first name is Erlend, I'm in Bergen, Norway and I'm currently writing a thesis on La Monte Young's Dream House.)

Lucier is performing "I Am Sitting in a Room" LIVE this Saturday at 7 at Wesleyan University. Be there.

She's studied martial arts.

back around 1983 a friend and I called 411 and got his home phone number and he was gracious enough top grant a couple of obnoxious kids an interview for our fanzine. we later met up with him at Cal Arts for a performance he was doing. It involved four parade sized bass drums with ping pong balls on fishing wire dangled in fron of the heads..
very low pitched square waves were played via speakers into the open end of the drums causing the ping pong balls to swing at various speeds. created a sort of sparse polyrhythm free of human hands and looked amazing.. wish i could remember the name of it, i'm pretty sure there's no available recording. also got him to sign my copies of 'bird and person dyning' and 'music for solo performer'. cherished posessions to be sure.

Has anyone ever heard a recording of 'the only talking machine of its kind in the world'? It preceeded 'I am sitting in a room' but exploring similar aspects of sound.

I'm gonna perform a Lucier piece in one of our lunchtime recitals at uni, should be funny, people on my course find it hard enough to listen to some pretty minimalism like Reich or Riley.

http://research.umbc.edu/~tmoore/interview_frame.html

http://www.newmusicbox.com/page.nmbx?id=72fp01

http://www.instal.org.uk/

Fri 14 Oct
Doors 7pm (first act on 7.15pm)

Jandek
JOJO
Black Boned Angel
UP-TIGHT

Sat 15 Oct
Doors 4pm (first act on 4.30pm)

Tetuzi Akiyama
Birchville Cat Motel
directing hand
Rauhan Orkesteri
Sun City Girls
Hijokaidan

Sun 16 Oct
Doors 4pm (first act on 4.30pm)

Ingar Zach + Rhodri Davies
Tom Bruno
Loren Mazzacane Connors + Alan Licht
Chie Mukai
Henri Chopin
Pauline Oliveros + David Dove

if you go you MUST see henri chopin (I haven't but spent time wondering what it must be like). there are lots of ok, and some wonderful sound poetry but he's so much better than any of 'em.

that's my pick

http://www.ubu.com/sound/aether.html

I watched 1, 3 and 4 last night (had already seen 2)

they're incredible for the patient

This event will be archived online.

Yay!

I tried watching the Mumma episode of Aether tonight and instead I'm just watching the Lucier episode again

it's impossibly great

www.unstcollective.com
www.resonancefm.com

Unusually beautiful packaging is a plus as well.

You still need Panorama for "Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels", but this release beats Crossings hands down

The Wesleyan University Orchestra, Gamelan Ensemble and Collegium Musicum perform Alvin Lucier's ensemble works Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers (1994), Six Geometries (1993), Panorama 2 (2011), Exploration of the House (2005), and Shadow Lines (2008).

serious brainpower

Panel to include Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Paula Matthusen, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros and Christian Wolff. Moderated by Anthony Braxton, Professor of Music.

holy moly

yeah, i got the schedule for this. wish i was there. as usual, all the interesting stuff in new england happens the minute i leave town.

i will be interviewing him, though!

hey geeta

good imdb review of one of the 'Dr. Chicago' series of films I brought up in the subway: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203426/

I haven't seen it myself, sure want to.

http://georgemanupelli.com/

The Chicago films do not use actors. Instead, the main characters are played by major avant garde talents from other creative fields. Dr. Chicago is played by renowned composer Alvin Lucier whose stream-of-consciousness soliloquies in the films are punctuated by his ferocious stutter. Painter and performance artist Mary Ashley, a primary member of the legendary ONCE Group, smolders throughout as Chicago's girlfriend, Sheila Marie.

you know me! in the subway, bringing up things

yeah I really can't believe I haven't seen these yet:
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/07/the_return_of_dr_ch-ch-ch-ch-c.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/events/1369

There is nothing else like 'Still Lives' and any chance to physically hear it with the use of your body shouldn't be missed

looking forward to this on sunday: http://www.thelab.org/index.php/schedule/events/648-charles-curtis

^kinda how I feel about "bird & person dyning", went to a performance of it when I was 19 & have wanted to hear it again ever since. Talked to lucier afterwards, really nice man!

Ward u r in for a treat!

ty guys, i will be there

milton that curtis gig looks sweet - are there any particular charles curtis recordings you wld rec - i remember seeing a dbl alb (?) w/ a helix cover (??), that wld prob be the most common item here in the uk

xyzzzz - come to glasgow!

Ward - re: Curtis, see my post from 2006 with Charles' recording, the link still works.

Have to say that Glasgow gig looks amazing and worth the trip. Let you know if I can make it near the time.

xp

you're talking about this one: http://www.discogs.com/Anthony-Burr--Charles-Curtis-Alvin-Lucier/release/776910

I like it -- good overview of the oscillator + instrument beating pieces, well recorded. gotta say the packaging is unusually good, not only beautiful but really re-enforces the music.

These worth checking out too:
http://www.discogs.com/%C3%89liane-Radigue-Pour-Charles-Curtis-Naldjorlak/release/1542131
http://www.discogs.com/La-Monte-Young--Marian-Zazeela-Just-Charles-Cello-In-The-Romantic-Chord-2002-2003/release/1059636

my favorite of the oscillator + instrument pieces is probably Lucier's ground-zero recording - http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1015.html -- each instrument acts so differently with the sine wave, you get a lot more variety than you do when two dedicated instrumentalists do their thing for two whole discs. my second favorite is 'Panorama' - http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1012.html

xyzzzz,i am in NYC the week before the Lucier weekend, la-di-da - (and def gonna go to the Dream House on one day of my trip) - but you wld of course be a welcome guest in the dream house here - now, to read yr post above

ty again milton, will study

OK, so the performance of 'Bird & Person Dyning' was def the highlight of this weekend, for me - sort've reminded me of Ashley's Automatic Writing in that it had the almost subliminal feel/effect of being whispered to, throughout. In fact, seeing the Lucier works performed made it clearer to me that his project is, at least in part, an attempt to bring to light the 'hidden' language of feedback, electricity, amplification, etc - a secret sound world that we don't normally hear or recongise, in the course of the everyday, but that runs perpetually, just out of reach. The piece for cello and amplified vases also illuminated this, with the cellist almost coaxing sound from the pots, like a snake-charmer. 'Still Lives' wasn't quite as effective, this time; the drones didn't seem to be loud enough, and funnily enough, a lack of volume was also the problem w/ the o'malley/ambarachi performance, both of them playing their amplified guitars flat on a table using e-bows, opposite each other, but not really generating enough of a noise to get the full speaker/feedback interaction-thing going. O'malley later got the chance to bring the skronk on a massive Dumitrescu piece for orchestra and electric guitar that closed the fest - lots of metal bashing, percussion, cosmic cataclysms, stirring stuff.

It involved four parade sized bass drums with ping pong balls on fishing wire dangled in fron of the heads..
very low pitched square waves were played via speakers into the open end of the drums causing the ping pong balls to swing at various speeds. created a sort of sparse polyrhythm free of human hands and looked amazing.

This was also in situ throughout the fest, and was great to watch and experience - there was also an element of suspense or surprise, wondering when the ping pong balls would stir against the drums. Took a couple of pics of this on my phone, hope to upload them later.

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc497/WardFowler/Photo0061_zps74c62541.jpg

sounds like an amazing show

found a copy of this recently: http://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Scores-Alvin-Lucier/dp/0819550426/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368553358&sr=1-2

worth it. the early scores are all prose, pointing at and digging around the ideas behind the music; I found it as inspiring as Silence or A Year From Monday

Fantastic report Ward, real shame I couldn't be there.

http://www.alvin-lucier-film.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZahY5IjbkZU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGtS2mnYFQw&feature=youtu.be

5 year anniversary

https://twitter.com/alvinlucier

Follower #250.

This looks positively amazing. Stoked for the 120 page book(let) alone.

This compilation, if it can be called that, sorely misses 'Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas', 'Music On A Long Thin Wire' and especially 'Bird and Person Dyning', but perchance it's the best Lucier compilation out there. Can't wait for this box to be dropped at my doorstep.

wouldn't call that one a comp. new performances of older works are reboots. saw the sonic arts union show at issue project room a few months ago and lucier's new works for sinewaves were new territory; instead of keeping one or two slow moving sinewaves as foundational sounds to prompt the acoustical beating of the live instruments, there are quite a few sinewaves in motion, each with diverging / converging trajectories, so the latticework / beating coming from the electronics are already completely busy - not minimal at all, crazy sounding. like some kind of audio illusion bridge between radigue and amacher. it was amazing lucier was even there in person for the show - walking very slowly now, but on top of it, black lives matter t-shirt, surrounded by old friends

Ha, that's amazing, and heartening to hear. The guy's 87 and wearing a BLM shirt! Good for him.

Call it a comp, call it a reboot: I'm excited about it either way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Pnb_ZE7Hs

Lucier is compelling throughout. Majestically ignores the interviewer for much of the interview. (I hate this interviewer but he gets good results so maybe he is good?)

“How do I get in touch with John Cage?” “Have you tried calling him?”

AL: [Fascinating detailed explanation of upcoming piece]
Interviewer cuts him off: [bored and unimpressed] “Okay. Something to look forward to.”

has anyone figured out why red bull boosts avant garde music

RIP

RIP. I kind of guessed this when I saw this thread bumped.

:(

It is a cliche to name a "genius" who "changed" music, listening or recording for everyone who followed. Often it is a bullshit honorific. I am however sincere when I say Alvin Lucier, genius, invented new ways to hear, execute, record and think about music and sound. Requiescat.

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) December 1, 2021

RIP

Oh fuck I’m glad I saw at 2019 Big Ears.

Also in a recent documentary I discovered he used the same brand of crushed tomatoes to make marinara sauce as my family does.

:-(

Was so lucky to see him do Music for Solo Performer. Just a little old man sitting quietly while everything erupted around him.

First mention of Alvin Lucier in the NYT, August 28, 1963 pic.twitter.com/Ni32QySlCP

— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) December 2, 2021

Uh

Hey, um, can we talk about this factoid in the art forum Lucier piece? pic.twitter.com/t31bE1laSh

— Unseen Worlds (@Unseen_Worlds) February 3, 2022

waht

"I Am Being Cloned In A Room (In Perth)"

"I am sitting in a body different than the one I was in before"

"I am recording the sound of my soul and am going to play it back into the body"